A gift from heaven: Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer and its tech-down approach to monitor urban sustainability beyond local contexts

Abstract

Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) exemplifies a tech-down approach by leveraging proprietary data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse urban greenhouse gas emissions, solar potential and tree canopy coverage. While framed as a tool for cities to assess and improve sustainability, the EIE often overlooks localised contexts and depends on opaque data generation processes that follow commercial interests. This study evaluates the EIE’s data assemblage through critical urban data studies, focusing on its technical and contextual stacks. It critiques the EIE’s lack of transparency, dependence on proprietary data and marginalisation of local expertise. Despite its promise, the EIE raises significant concerns about power imbalances, data validity and urban governance implications. Cities utilising the EIE must reconcile its global standardisation with specific local needs, navigating a complex landscape shaped by Google’s corporate interests. The findings highlight the need for a more inclusive, context-specific approach to urban sustainability metrics that balances innovative data use with transparency and equitable stakeholder engagement. The EIE demonstrates how sustainability indicators and data are defined through a technology-driven process shaped by a private company, while neglecting local knowledge and narratives. This process – referred to as a tech-down approach – differs from both bottom-up and top-down methods of sustainability indicator selection, as well as from data philanthropy initiatives by private companies, due to its exclusive reliance on corporate data and its global scope. This study urges critical reflection on the broader implications of tech-driven urban monitoring tools like the EIE.